"What creates the notion of a landscape? Of a figure? This body of work is part of an ongoing series of experiments exploring how structure, material, and process affect or create meaning. I observe myself in the act of painting and watch how the process of making a painting affects its meaning."

One day, Robert Arneson, looking at a painted ceramic that Walter James Mansfield had brought to class, turned to his student and said, in effect, that though Mansfield might be an artist, he surely wasn't a sculptor. He might, however, be a painter. If Arneson's remark helped turn Mansfield toward painting, other teachers had already encouraged him to find his way to becoming a maker of some kind, to stick with the hard work of learning a craft and perfecting technique. "Artists have a real work ethic," says Mansfield. "They are workers. They put a lot of work into making something of value." He had gone to UC Davis to study photography, and it was under the tutelage of Harvey Himelfarb, then head of the art department at Davis, that Mansfield first felt confirmed in his vocation as an artist. Later, Wayne Thiebaud and others revealed to him the openness and range of expression available to the artist who works in paint. Thiebaud's talks on art and the history of art also inspired in him a respect for the "long, long tradition" of painting. Mansfield was born in the Tidewater region of Virginia in 1964 and spent his childhood years there. He moved to San Jose with his family when he was 12. He discovered his love of the visual arts when he picked up a camera and began photographing his parents and two sisters. UC Davis awarded him an undergraduate degree in fine art and psychology in 1987. His education continued at the California State University of Sacramento, where he got a Master's degree in studio art in 1999. In 1997, he received an Artreach grant from the Nelson Gallery ARTfriends organization to develop a community art project in collaboration with mental health clients. He completed his studies in 2001 at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he got his MFA in painting and drawing.